Booker prize 2011: Julian Barnes triumphs at last | Books | The Guardian Books Booker prize 2011: Julian Barnes triumphs at last Fourth time lucky for Julian Barnes, who wins the Man Booker prize 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending after missing out on three previous occasions Author Julian Barnes smiles after winning the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with his book The Sense of an Ending at the Guildhall in London. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters Tuesday 18 October 2011 19.15 EDT First published on Tuesday 18 October 2011 19.15 EDT Close This article is 5 years old Julian Barnes finally won the literary prize that has eluded him on three previous occasions when he was tonight presented with the Man Booker prize for his short novel, The Sense of an Ending . His victory came after one of the most bitter and vituperative run-ups to the prize in living memory - not among the shortlisted writers, but from dismayed and bemused commentators who accused judges of putting populism above genuine quality . But few of those critics could claim Barnes' novel is not of the highest quality.

The chair of this year's judges, former MI5 director general Stella Rimington, said it had "the markings of a classic of English Literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading." Much of the row over the shortlist has stemmed from Rimington's own prioritisation of "readability" in the judging criteria. But tonight, she said quality had always been just as important. "It is a very readable book, if I may use that word, but readable not only once but twice and even three times," she said. "It is incredibly concentrated. Crammed into this short space is a great deal of information which you don't get out of a first read." Accepting the prize, Barnes thanked the judges for their wisdom and the sponsors for their cheque. He also offered some advice to publishers: "Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping." Afterwards Barnes admitted a sense of relief at finally winning.

"I didn't want to go to my grave and get a Beryl," he said referring to Bainbridge, who was shortlisted five times, never won and received a posthumous Best of Beryl Booker prize . He said the "readability" row had been "a false hare" to which he had paid little attention, adding: "Most great books are readable. Any shortlist of the last ten years that I've read has contained nothing but what you would call readable books." Barnes once called the prize "posh bingo" and he said he had not changed his view – it simply depended on who the judges were and what they liked. "The Booker prize has a tendency to drive people a bit mad," he said, not least writers with "hope and lust and greed and expectation" so the best way to stay sane, he said, was by treating it as a lottery until you win "when you realise that the judges are the wisest heads in literary Christendom". Asked what he would spend the £50,000 prize money on he said a new watch strap was first on his list.

"I could buy a whole new watch." The book, at 150 pages, is undoubtedly short, but not the shortest to ever win the prize – that record belongs to Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore , which won in 1979 and is shorter by a few hundred words. The Sense of an Ending, Barnes' 11th novel, explores memory: how fuzzy it can be and how we amend the past to suit our own wellbeing. It tells the story through the apparently insignificant and dull life of arts administrator Tony Webster. "One of the things that the book does is talk about the human kind," said Rimington. "None of us really knows who we are. We present ourselves in all sorts of ways, but maybe the ways we present ourselves are not how we really are." Rimington said the question of whether Barnes was overdue to win the £50,000 prize never entered her mind or figured in the debate. "We really were, and I know you find it very boring of me to say so, looking at the books that we had in front of us," she said. Despite the sometimes hostile reaction to the shortlist, Rimington said she had enjoyed the process of judging.

"I've been through many crises at one time or another in which this one pales, I must say. We've been very interested by the discussion. We've followed it sometimes with great glee and amusement. The fact that it has been in the headlines is very gratifying." It took the judges (Rimington, MP Chris Mullin, author Susan Hill, the Daily Telegraph's head of books Gaby Wood and the former Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona) just 31 minutes to decide on the winner, after what Rimington called "an interesting debate." They had been divided 3-2 at the beginning of the judging meeting, but were all agreed by the end. "There was no blood on the carpet, nobody went off in a huff and we all ended up firm friends and happy with the result," she said. Barnes, 65, had been shortlisted for the prize three times previously; in 1984 with Flaubert's Parrot , when he lost out to Anita Brookner; win 1998 with England, England , losing to Ian McEwan; and with Arthur & George in 2005, when he lost to John Banville.

What was particularly striking this year was that Barnes was the only seriously big hitter on the shortlist, and the only author to have been shortlisted previously. The others on the shortlist were Carol Birch for her much-admired Jamrach's Menagerie , a historical high seas adventure; two Canadian writers - Patrick deWitt for The Sisters Brothers , a picaresque western, and Esi Edugyan for Half Blood Blues , which mixes the raw beauty of jazz and the terror of Nazism; and two debut novels – Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English , which tells the story of a Ghanaian boy who turns detective on a south London housing estate; and AD Miller for Snowdrops , a Moscow-set tale of corruption and moral decline. The shortlist undoubtedly prompted a livelier debate about what makes a great novel with many commentators annoyed by judge Chris Mullin's belief that a book had to "zip along" to be worthy of being considered. Last year's Booker chairman Andrew Motion also weighed in , accusing the judges of creating a "false divde" between what is high end and what is readable, and questioning the absence of authors such as Alan Hollinghurst, Edward St Aubyn and Ali Smith.

The row has also led to a group of writers, publishers and agents announcing plans to set up a rival literary prize that would reward the artistic achievement of a writer above 'readability.' Full details of the Literature Prize have yet to be announced but the agent Andrew Kidd said they felt "a space has opened for a new prize which is unequivocally about excellence." However, not everyone condemned the shortlist. Book sellers, in particular, were happy with a list that resulted in record Booker sales. A spokesman for Waterstones, Jon Howell, called the critical reaction "ungracious sniping" and said Barnes was a worthy winner. If anyone is upset at the win, it may well be the bookies. William Hill said more than half of all bets had been for Barnes, a 6/4 favourite. • This article was amended on 19 October 2011. The original described Matthew d'Ancona as editor of the Spectator. This has been corrected to former editor. As you may have heard, Julian Barnes won the Booker prize last night with his novel The Sense of an Ending. The Booker judges are clearly fans - are you?

Take our quiz and find out Published: 19 Oct 2011 Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize Search Continue reading the main story The novelist Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday night for “The Sense of an Ending,” a slim and meditative story of mortality, frustration and regret. “The Sense of an Ending,” published in the United States by Knopf, part of Random House, is Mr. Barnes’s 11th novel, a 163-page book that has sometimes been called a novella for its size and simplicity. Mr. Barnes, 65, who lives in London, has been nominated for the Booker three times in the past. The prize, Britain’s best-known literary award, is given annually to a novel by an author in Britain, Ireland or one of the Commonwealth nations. The award is accompanied by a check for £50,000, or about $78,000, and comes with an immediate lift in book sales and visibility.

The chairwoman of the judging panel, Stella Rimington, a former chief of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, said in a statement that Mr. Barnes’s novel “has the markings of a classic of English literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani said the book “manages to create genuine suspense as a sort of psychological detective story. We not only want to find out how Mr. Barnes’s narrator, Tony Webster, has rewritten his own history — and discover what actually happened some 40 years ago — but also understand why he has needed to do so.” The Booker selection brings an annual hand-wringing over the state of the award. This year, publishers and critics worried aloud that the prize had lost its literary merit in favor of commercial viability and readability. The Booker judges were criticized for their shortlist and for their public comments that they were looking for “readable” and “enjoyable” books, rather than those that would be bought and then placed on a shelf only to be admired.

Photo Julian Barnes Credit Alan Edwards The other books on the shortlist included “Snowdrops,” by A. D. Miller, a debut crime novel of greed, murder and morality in Moscow; “Pigeon English,” by Stephen Kelman, a novel that examines issues of urban poverty and violence from the perspective of a charming, inquisitive child in a London housing project; and “Jamrach’s Menagerie” by Carol Birch, an atmospheric historical novel that follows two boys on a sea expedition to the Dutch East Indies. Also shortlisted were two books by Canadian authors: “The Sisters Brothers,” by Patrick deWitt, a comic novel set in the gold-rush era of the American West; and “Half-Blood Blues,” by Esi Edugyan, a book that explores the black experience in Nazi Germany. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500. The award was announced late Tuesday evening at a ceremony at the Guildhall in London. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Mr.

Barnes, the author of “Flaubert’s Parrot” and “Love, etc.,” was easily the best-known name of the shortlisted authors, especially in Britain, and was widely viewed as overdue for winning the Booker. In addition to his fiction, Mr. Barnes has written short stories and several collections of journalism. In the days leading up to the ceremony, bookmakers in Britain had decisively chosen Mr. Barnes as the likely winner, but past predictions have proved unreliable. Some suggested that the judging panel would be unlikely to pick Mr. Barnes because of his dismissive attitude toward the award in the past (he once referred to the Booker as “posh bingo”). If his book sales resemble those of previous Booker winners, like Howard Jacobson, Hilary Mantel and Kiran Desai, Mr. Barnes will see a boost in both Britain and the United States. In September, when the book was chosen for the Booker shortlist, Knopf moved up the publication date from January to Oct. 5. On Tuesday evening, Knopf took more steps to prepare for increased interest.

Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, said the publisher had already shipped 23,000 copies but planned to print 25,000 more quickly. A version of this article appears in print on October 19, 2011, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Novelist Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Project MUSE - The Man Booker Prize for 2011 The Man Booker Prize for 2011 Merritt Moseley (bio) A. D. Miller, Snowdrops. Doubleday, 2011. 272 pages. $24.95; Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie. Doubleday, 2011. 304 pages. $25.95; Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues. Picador, 2012. 336 pages. $15 pb; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending. Knopf, 2011. 176 pages.

$23.95; Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers. Ecco, 2011. 336 pages. $24.99 pb; Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. 288 pages. $24. When the Man Booker Prize for 2011 was awarded on October 18 to Julian Barnes for his novel The Sense of an Ending, the decision was almost universally hailed. Barnes, aged sixty-five, had been shortlisted for the fourth time; he is clearly one of Britain’s foremost living novelists; the bookmakers had made it a clear favorite; and The Sense of an Ending, while not his best book, is a genuinely fine novel. But the sense of relief felt by many observers was because somehow the judging panel and the Booker organization, after a series of gaffes and perplexing decisions, had finally gotten something right. Barnes’s victory partially rescued what had been the strangest and most troubling Booker season for many years. The Booker began as an award for the best British novel of the year.

That remains its central purpose; but, in a sprawling drive to build the brand, the organizers have invented retrospective awards—the Best of the Booker and the Booker of Bookers, both won by Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children—and the Lost Man Booker for the novels published in 1970 that had no chance to win because of a change in the rules (awarded to J. G. Farrell’s Troubles). There is a Russian Booker Prize. And there is a Man Booker International Prize, awarded every two years since 2005; the 2011 prize went in June to the American Philip Roth and produced a Booker brouhaha, or, as it tends to be called, a kerfuffle, with the judge Carmen Callil resigning in protest. The International prize, worth £60,000, is judged by a panel of only three persons, all English-speakers (the other two were Rick Gekoski, an author and a London book dealer, and Justin Cartwright, a South African novelist). The two men were strongly in favor of Roth; Callil was opposed and clearly wanted the panel to default to another candidate acceptable to all three.

In many, many published comments afterward she declared that Roth “goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe”; “I don’t rate him as a writer at all”; and “Roth digs brilliantly into himself, but little else is there. [End Page 341] His self-involvement and self-regard restrict him as a novelist.” The founder of Virago, the feminist publishing house, Callil denied that her feminist views or Roth’s reputation in some quarters for misogyny had affected her decision: she just thinks he isn’t a good enough writer to earn that prize. Both Callil and Gekoski acknowledged the disadvantage suffered by foreign-language writers whose work must be judged in translation, and of the first three winners of the prize—Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro, and Roth—all write in English and two are North American (the initial prize went to the Albanian Ismail Kadar).

This parochialism made even more astonishing the comments of Jonathan Taylor, chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, who declared that the International Booker is now more important than the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he described as “at best political.” Robert McCrum, one of Britain’s most serious bookmen, described this as throwing kerosene on the “smouldering wreck” of what had already been a Booker car crash. Roth didn’t turn up to get his award, but McCrum suspected he would have made his way to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony. The Man Booker International Prize dates from 2005 and is awarded biennially. The Lost Booker is a one-off, and so is another oddity announced in 2011: the Best of Beryl. This gave readers the chance to vote on which of Beryl Bainbridge’s five shortlisted novels was her best. Bainbridge, who died in 2010, was a famous Booker bridesmaid (when he won at his fourth chance, Julian Barnes said he didn’t want to “go to my grave and get a Beryl”). Voters chose Bainbridge’s novel Master Georgie (1998).

Some observers found the award odd and condescending, as if admitting that only in competition with herself could she ever win. Others wondered why the organizers didn’t just suspend the rule limiting the award to living authors and let Bainbridge’s final novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, which was published in 2011 and would have been eligible, be considered for the award. The “car crash” continued with the choices of the judges and the steady revelation of their literary principles. At least in the past decades, Booker panels have been heterogeneous, usually including a mixture of novelists, literary journalists, academics, and at least one wild card—a politician, comedian, or actor. The 2011 group consisted of one novelist, Susan Hill; Matthew d’Ancona, a journalist; Gaby Wood, head of books at the Daily Telegraph; Chris Mullin, a politician who is also a published author, but of his own diaries; and, as chair, Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of mi 5, the British domestic intelligence service. She has also published thrillers, though she acknowledges the help of a ghostwriter with the research and writing.

The names are only a little more miscellaneous than in recent years (though no recent jury can stand comparison with a group such as the judges for 1972—George Steiner, Elizabeth Bowen, and Cyril Connolly). It was the odd critical principles they kept announcing that made people uneasy—as when Susan Hill tweeted “Hurrah! Man Booker judges accused of ‘dumbing [End Page 342] down.’ They mean our shortlist is readable and enjoyable.” Chris Mullin also called for “something readable”—readable being shorthand, apparently, for his demand for books that “zip along.” Rimington, announcing the shortlist, said, “We wanted people to buy these books and read them. Not buy them and admire them.” Rimington proved surprisingly thin-skinned for a former spymaster, comparing judging a fiction prize to the world of espionage—“worthy of the kgb at its best”—pointing out that “weirder people than me have chaired the Booker Prize,” and waspishly denouncing “so-called literary critics” for disagreeing with the judges’ decisions, especially to omit from their shortlist well-regarded new novels by Sebastian Barry, Ali Smith, Philip Hensher, and especially Alan Hollinghurst.

That shortlist, announced September 6, contained, in addition to Barnes’s novel, Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch; The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt; Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan; Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman; and Snowdrops by A. D. Miller. There were two first-time novelists and two Canadians. Several of the books can be described as thrillers, while The Sisters Brothers is a first for Booker, a Western. Three of them are as negligible as anything that has ever been considered for the Booker: Snowdrops, Pigeon English, and Half-Blood Blues. Snowdrops (the title refers to a corpse discovered when the snow melts in the spring) is about postcommunist Russia and strives to make the deeply depressing point that there everyone and everything are dingy and venal. The narrator, an English lawyer named Nick Platt, tells how he became involved in corrupt dealings after what seemed (but was not) an accidental encounter in the Metro.

Easy sex with Russian girls, a moderate sympathy for an elderly neighbor, and a complaisance in dealing with an obvious mobster propel the story, which is framed as a self-explanatory account of himself to his fiancée. The revelations are visible a long way off. The atmosphere produced by Miller, a first-time novelist who was a journalist in Moscow, feels credible, but the result is an average first novel, not a deserving finalist for a major prize. The other two poor choices have in common the worthiness and importance of their subject matter, to which the treatment does inadequate justice. Pigeon English is written by a former social worker and fictionalizes the shocking murder, a few years back, of Damilola Taylor, an eleven-year-old Nigerian immigrant killed in a London housing project, apparently by local thugs. At the time people commented on what a cheerful promising lad Taylor was, and Kelman creates a smart upbeat narrator, Harrison Opuku, to tell the story. At the beginning of the action Harri sees the aftermath of a murder; at the end he is himself murdered. In between he deals with difficult school life, intimidation by older boys and girls, and an ill-judged effort to solve the original crime.

The title of the book refers to Kelman’s device, also ill-judged, of including passages spoken by pigeons. [End Page 343] Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues is about a little-known swath of modern European history, the lives of black jazz musicians under the Nazis. Its central character is Hieronymus Falk, a youthful genius on the clarinet; its narrator is Sid, an older former bandmate, who in the novel’s present action (1992) is retired in Baltimore. When he goes back to Germany for a celebration of the music of Hiero, in company with the only other surviving member of the combo, an African-American drummer, secrets are revealed, betrayals denounced, and old wounds reopened. Much of what happens is implausible—every time the whole group jumps into a car along with Sid’s stand-up bass I wonder if Edugyan has ever seen a bass—and long stretches pass with little action. The novel is thoroughly spoiled by its unbelievable version of how black Americans talk. Edugyan, a Canadian of Ghanaian ancestry, has a degree from Johns Hopkins, so must have spent time in Baltimore, but she demonstrates a very faulty ear.

Jazzmen, she thinks, are unfamiliar with the simple past tense; their language is often lyrical, anything poetic being usually followed by some balancing profanity. Sid says, “I known they loved us, got beat up in the streets cause of us. And hell, I wanted to love them back. But I ain’t never did.” And he says, “Ain’t made one shred of damn sense. Yesterday afternoon we still been rolling through the French countryside, past slumped barns, brindled cows on the roadside, folk cycling slowly by with groceries wrapped in cloth in their baskets. Hell. It was heaven on earth, damn pastoral. We been half blind with relief . . .” From time to time, for variety, he adopts British usage—e.g. “shaking like a pensioner.” Booker judges have a fatal weakness for books they think, incorrectly, show a mastery of the vocabulary and rhythm of the American demotic (see the winner Vernon God Little of 2003, written by an Australian). On November 8 Half-Blood Blues won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Canadian fiction. The remaining three books have much to praise.

And any of the three authors could have echoed Stella Rimington and said “weirder books than mine have won the Booker.” Both Jamrach’s Menagerie and The Sisters Brothers are action-packed narratives set in the nineteenth century. In The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt writes a genuinely engrossing, mordantly funny picaresque tale about two brothers who work as professional killers. Eli Sisters is the narrator, a more thoughtful, less ruthless man than his brother Charlie. His voice is the key to this novel’s attractiveness: it ranges from the cruelly deadpan—“I was reaching for my pistol when Charlie stepped from behind a tree and casually shot the prospector as he ran past. It was a head shot, which took the back off his skull like a cap in the wind”—and the unexpectedly thoughtful, a trait that makes him less mindlessly murderous than his brother.

Eli’s story is comfortably within the tradition of the Western—claim-jumping, shootouts, prostitutes, double-crossing; at one point he mentions the two brothers stopping to make camp in a ravine, and contrasts the way [End Page 344] they behave with a familiar “scenario in serialized adventure novels.” Eli is simultaneously frightening and sympathetic and when, at the conclusion of the carnival of crime, he reflects, “I could not recall a time when I was precisely where I wanted to be, and this was a very satisfying feeling.” The novel leaves a reader, too, with a very satisfying feeling. Carol Birch (after Julian Barnes the most experienced writer, with ten novels to her credit before Jamrach’s Menagerie) demonstrates a very fertile creativity in her tale of a London urchin named Jaffy Brown, who first goes to work in a London menagerie, then ships out on a three-year voyage to the south seas on a ship whose mission is to capture a dragon for Mr. Jamrach’s collection. When a storm sinks the ship, the story turns from swashbuckling adventure to grueling endurance.

Jaffy survives, though he loses his best friend, Tim, along with almost the whole of the crew. Their sufferings are terrible and include cannibalism. The novel leads back to the London docks and the afterlife of Jaffy, in which he travels, reads, comes in contact with Darwin and (through his own menagerie) Dante Rossetti, and marries. This last part is, naturally, at a reduced dramatic pitch, but it serves the purpose of re-creating for a reader how a youth who survives such an ordeal (returning to be called “the cannibal boy”) carries on with life. He writes that “I don’t fit the world of everyday things, the people going about their daily routines. . . . Sometimes I long for a monk’s cell, a hole in the rock, a bower in the woods, so my mind can flood all directions like water, the sea.” Unless the Booker Prize is to be hermetically sealed off from any suspicion of genre fiction, so that no Western can be considered, and no nautical adventure (but what about The Life of Pi?), either of these novels would have been an acceptable, if not necessarily popular, recipient.

Still The Sense of an Ending is more in the main vein of Bookerness, with a story of middle-class life in England and an emphasis on difficulties and confusions in personal relations, not on killing for hire or choking down the flesh of one’s shipmate. This short novel (or novella, as some have called it, picayunely questioning its eligibility for a novel prize) is by no means a summing up for Barnes. But it has some features that invite retrospection over his career. There is a good deal of philosophical commentary. The prospect of betrayal by a female lover is central, as is the desirability or otherwise of settling for a dull middle age. It is a retrospective account by a fallible first-person narrator, Tony Webster, that raises the question of whether we ever really interpret our lives accurately. The early pages are a vivid recounting of schoolboy life among good friends who are “book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic,” like the young Toni and Christopher in his first novel, Metroland—with the same kind of ironic judgment on youth: “Yes, of course we were pretentious—what else is youth for?

We used terms like ‘Weltanschauung’ and ‘Sturm und Drang,’ enjoyed saying ‘That’s philosophically [End Page 345] self-evident,’ and assured one another that the imagination’s first duty was to be transgressive.” The schoolboy frolic is complicated by a new boy, Adrian Finn, more serious and more inscrutable than Tony or his mates Colin and Alex. After one of their schoolmates kills himself, Adrian quotes Camus to the effect that “suicide was the only true philosophical question.” This passes as part of the bookish philosophizing. But soon they all go off to university (Adrian to Cambridge, the others to lesser destinations). Tony has his first serious relationship with a girl named Veronica, they break up, and Adrian writes for permission to go out with her; and after Tony sends a brutal letter in response, Adrian kills himself, leaving a note with Camus-like explanations. Tony rapidly sums up the years that follow—marriage, parenthood, divorce, a career—with “And that’s a life, isn’t it?

Some achievements and some disappointments.” This unreflectively normal life, agreeably uneventful, is interrupted when Tony receives a letter informing him that Mrs. Ford, the mother of Veronica, has died and left him five hundred pounds, along with a letter that references Adrian’s last months. This spurs him to find Veronica, and he comes close to stalking her. Eventually he learns more about his past, about Veronica and Adrian, and about his own responsibility for the past (and the present). The Sense of an Ending is witty, as Barnes always is, but not as funny as some of his early novels; the more somber mood accords with his most recent nonfiction book, Nothing To Be Frightened Of (about death), and his 2011 collection of short stories, Pulse (also largely about decline and mortality). The story is artfully arranged, and the handling of history is sharp: when Tony Webster insists that “most people didn’t experience ‘the sixties’ until the seventies”—an explanation for sexual inexperience and timorousness—he endorses the point made by Ian McEwan, Barnes’s contemporary, in On Chesil Beach in 2007.

I appreciate the mastery shown in a passage like this one: “I spent a week trying to liberate new memories of Veronica, but nothing emerged. Maybe I was trying too hard, pressing on my brain. So instead I replayed what I had, the long-familiar images and the recent arrivals. I held them up to the light, turning them in my fingers, trying to see if they now meant something different. I began reexamining my younger self, as far as it’s possible to do so. Of course I’d been crass and naïve—we all are; but I knew not to exaggerate these characteristics, because that’s just a way of praising yourself for what you have become.” That we cannot be sure even here, late in the novel, whether Tony is judicious or self-exculpatory is a tribute to the brilliance with which Barnes manages the narrator’s unreliability. Barnes’s victory may help still the criticism of the Man Booker Prize, though the announcement that one of next year’s judges will be the twenty-nine-year-old Dan Stevens, best known for portraying Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey, is not wholly reassuring.

Equally it may spike the guns of [End Page 346] the movement to found a new award, called The Literature Prize, designed to emphasize quality with less coded chatter about “readability.” A literary agent, Andrew Kidd, is the moving force here and the previous Booker Prize winners Pat Barker and John Banville support it, though the Booker has seen off competitors before, and this one, with no sponsor, may prove a damp squib. In the end the Booker judges got it right. Did they recognize the best novel published in English in 2011? Nobody knows. Did they generate enormous columns of publicity for authors and the publishing business? Certainly. And they gave the prize to one of Britain’s great novelists, recognizing him while he is still alive and at the peak of his powers. Julian Barnes wins the Man Booker | The Bookseller Home News Julian Barnes wins the Man Booker Julian Barnes wins the Man Booker Published October 18, 2011 by Bookseller Staff Share Share on Linkedin Julian Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending (Cape).

The author beat a shortlist comprising Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate); Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail); Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English (Bloomsbury); A D Miller's Snowdrops (Atlantic) and Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (Granta). Barnes wins £50,000. Ex-MI5 boss Dame Stella Rimington chairwoman of the 2011 judges said the five judges had reached a final, unanimous decision after about half an hour of debate on Tuesday. "I can tell you there was no blood on the carpet and nobody went off in a huff," she told the BBC. Barnes said he was both "relieved" and "delighted" by the award. He praised his publisher Cape for its "practical and moral" support, including his editor Dan Franklin and his "paymaster" Gail Rebuck - Random House chief executive. Unusually, he also praised the book's designer Suzanne Dean.

"If the physical book is to resist the challenge of the e-book it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping." He was the bookies' favourite to win the Man Booker prize, but had been passed over before having been on three previous Booker shortlists. Bookmakers William Hill said more than 50% of all bets struck on the Man Booker prize were placed on the Jonathan Cape title to win. Miller's Snowdrops and Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie were the bestselling books in the Man Booker shortlist on the high street, ahead of the prize's announcement, but Amazon had revealed that Barnes' novel was ahead on Kindle downloads. This year has had the bestselling shortlist since Nielsen BookScan records began with 98,850 copies sold across all print editions, up 115% on 2010 and up 105% on 2009. Last year's winner, Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question has sold 266,835 copies to date, up 4,250% on sales of his previous novel, The Act of Love.

The last time the bookies’ favourite won was also in 2009, when Hilary Mantel won with Wolf Hall. Foyles' Jonathan Ruppin said of the winning book: "As a writer characterised by immense intelligence and imagination, it would have been remarkable if Barnes had never won the Booker. This is definitely one that splits opinion, with some finding it subtly powerful and others frustratingly underdeveloped, but great writers rarely please everyone." He added: "It's certainly been the most contentious Booker I can remember, but there are ferocious arguments every year, which only goes to show how important the prize is for the trade and readers alike." This year’s judging process ran into controversy, with last week seeing the launch of The Literature Prize by a board including agent Andrew Kidd in rivalry to the prize, aiming to "offer readers a selection of novels that, in the view of these expert judges, are unsurpassed in their quality and ambition". The organisers said: "For many years this brief was fulfilled by the Booker (latterly the Man Booker) Prize. But . . .

it now prioritises a notion of 'readability' over artistic achievement." Man Booker Prize administrator Ion Trewin later slammed the accusation as "tosh". Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan by Joe Wicks Tom Kerridge's Dopamine Diet: My Low Carb, High Flavour, Stay Happy Way to Lose Weight by Tom Kerridge Lean in 15: The Shape Plan by Joe Wicks The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled by Ruby Wax Julian Barnes Wins 2011 Man Booker Prize Julian Barnes Wins 2011 Man Booker Prize Dan Evon Julian Barnes has just been awarded the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novel “The Sense of an Ending.” Barnes was given the prestigious award and an $80,000 cash prize at a black-tie ceremony in London. The LA Times reports that Barnes has been on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize three times before this year. Carol Birch’s “Jamrach’s Menagerie,” Esi Edugyan’s “Half Blood Blues,” Stephen Kelman’s “Pigeon English,” A.D.

Miller’s “Snowdrops,” and Patrick deWitt’s “The Sisters Brothers” were on the short list this year. Barnes said during his acceptance speech: “When asked, as he constantly was, why he had never won the Nobel Prize, Borges used to reply that there was a cottage industry devoted to not giving Borges the Nobel Prize. Over the last years, in occasional moments of mild paranoia, I have wondered whether there wasn’t some similar, sinister organisation operating over here… I would like to thank the judges – who I won’t hear a word against – for their wisdom, and the sponsors for their check.” Barnes’ novel, “The Sense of an Ending,” is one of the shortest novels to ever win the Man Booker Prize. But according to the Guardian , it isn’t quite the shortest. Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel, “Offshore,” which won in 1979, was shorter by a few hundred words. Still, Barnes refers to his novel as a 300-word novel, since people are routinely reading it twice.

Barnes said: “A number of readers have told me that as soon as they got to page 150, they went to the beginning and started again so I now regard it as a 300-page novel.” Have you read Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending?” Video: Julian Barnes wins the 2011 Man Booker Prize - Telegraph Booker Prize Julian Barnes wins the 2011 Man Booker Prize Author Julian Barnes speaks after winning the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Sense of an Ending at the Guildhall in London. 11:30PM BST 18 Oct 2011 He is the author who described the Booker Prize as “posh bingo”. Last night, at the fourth time of trying, Julian Barnes’s numbers finally came up. The 65-year-old writer won for The Sense of an Ending, a 150-page novella about a middle-aged man looking back on his younger days. His win was also one in the eye for critics who have derided this year’s shortlist as too low-brow.

At a press conference after he received the award, Barnes was asked for his take on the row prompted by Dame Stella Rimington’s remark that the judges were looking for “readability”. The argument made a false distinction between readable fiction and good fiction, he claimed. “Most great books are readable,” he said. “I don’t say I’ve written a great book but when you have read the great canon there are very few until you get to Finnegan’s Wake that you would call unreadable.” Related Content Man Booker Prize won by Julian Barnes on fourth attempt - BBC News BBC News Man Booker Prize won by Julian Barnes on fourth attempt By Tim Masters Entertainment and arts correspondent, BBC News 19 October 2011 From the section Entertainment & Arts comments Close share panel Media captionJulian Barnes thanked the judges "for their wisdom" and the sponsors "for their cheque" Julian Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending, having been shortlisted on three previous occasions. Barnes - the bookmakers' favourite - said he was "as much relieved as I am delighted" to win the £50,000 prize.

The judges had been criticised for putting a focus on "readability" in their choice of shortlisted novels. Chairwoman, ex-MI5 boss Dame Stella Rimington, said the publishing world was like the "KGB at its height". Of Barnes's novel, Dame Stella said it had "the makings of a classic of English literature". She described the novel as "exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading". "We thought it was a book that spoke to the humankind in the 21st Century." In reference to the row over the literary merit of the books the judges chose, she accused her critics within the publishing world of resembling the Russian security service for their use of "black propaganda, de-stabilisation operations, plots and double agents". If the physical book... is to resist the challenge of the e-book, it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping Julian Barnes She said the judges had followed the debate "sometimes with great glee and amusement". "We were talking about readability and quality. We were certainly always looking for quality as well," she said.

"That fact it's been in the headlines is very gratifying." Barnes, in his acceptance speech, said: "I'd like to thank the judges - whom I won't hear a word against - for their wisdom. And the sponsors for their cheque." Thanking the book's designer, Suzanne Dean, he added: "Those of you who've seen my book - whatever you may think of its contents - will probably agree that it is a beautiful object. "And if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the e-book, it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping." Industry paper The Bookseller reported that publisher Random House is now reprinting 75,000 copies of Barnes's book following its victory. Waterstones said it had ordered extra copies of the book, while WH Smith said it would feature the title in an upcoming promotion. 'Rather boring' The shortest novel of the six finalists, The Sense of an Ending is about childhood friendship and the imperfections of memory.

JULIAN BARNES Barnes has written 10 previous novels, numerous short stories and essays He was born in Leicester in 1946 and was educated at the City of London School He studied modern languages at Oxford, graduating in 1968 His jobs include literary editor for the New Statesman and TV critic for the Observer In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Medicis (for Flaubert's Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking It Over) It is narrated by a middle-aged man, Tony Webster, who reflects on the paths he and his friends have taken as the past catches up with him via a bequeathed diary. Dame Stella said that although the main character appeared at first to be "rather boring", he was gradually revealed to be somebody quite different. The former spy chief added: "One of the things the book does is talk about humankind.

None of us really know who we are - we present ourselves in all sorts of ways." The other nominees were Carol Birch (Jamrach's Menagerie); Canadians Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers) and Esi Edugyan (Half Blood Blues); and debut authors Stephen Kelman (Pigeon English) and AD Miller (Snowdrops). Barnes had been shortlisted for the prize on three previous occasions, without success. The London-based author was nominated in 1984 for Flaubert's Parrot, in 1998 for England, England and in 2005 for Arthur and George. Image caption Barnes had been shortlisted for the Booker on three previous occasions Dame Stella said the five judges had reached a final, unanimous decision after about half an hour of debate on Tuesday. "I can tell you there was no blood on the carpet and nobody went off in a huff," she said. Her fellow Booker judges were writer and journalist Matthew d'Ancona, author Susan Hill, author and politician Chris Mullin and Gaby Wood of the Daily Telegraph.

Despite the literary row, this year's shortlist has been the best-selling in Booker history - sales of the shortlisted novels are up 127% on last year. According to Nielsen BookScan, 98,876 copies were sold in the six weeks after the shortlist was announced. Snowdrops has sold most, shifting more than 35,000 copies since it was shortlisted. Next is Jamrach's Menagerie with 19,500 and The Sense of an Ending with 15,000. Media captionThe 2011 Booker nominees read excerpts from their works Barnes's book has sold more than 27,500 copies since it was published in early August. At 150 pages, it is not the shortest book to win the Booker. That record is held by Penelope Fitzgerald's 132-page Offshore, which won in 1979. Commenting on the winner, Jonathan Ruppin of booksellers Foyles said: "As a writer characterised by immense intelligence and imagination, it would have been remarkable if Barnes had never won the Booker.

"This is definitely one that splits opinion, with some finding it subtly powerful and others frustratingly underdeveloped. But great writers rarely please everyone." Man Booker prize 2011 longlist includes quartet of debut novels | Books | The Guardian Man Booker prize 2011 longlist includes quartet of debut novels Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English leads charge by first-time authors as previous winners fail to make 13-strong longlist Stephen Kelman's debut novel Pigeon English, once consigned to a literary agency slush pile, has made the 13-strong Man Booker longlist. Photograph: Jonathan Ring Tuesday 26 July 2011 13.22 EDT First published on Tuesday 26 July 2011 13.22 EDT Close This article is 5 years old A debut novel chronicling gang warfare in Peckham has joined efforts by a former Man Booker winner, Alan Hollinghurst , and Julian Barnes - the novelist many people mistakenly think must have won - on this year's longlist for the prestigious prize.

Stephen Kelman , who was a warehouseman, care worker and local government administrator before taking up writing in 2005, was longlisted for Pigeon English, one of the more eye-catching additions to a lineup that includes four first-time novelists. The book, which draws on the murder of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor and for a time languished on a literary agency's slush pile, eventually became the subject of a bidding war last year before being picked up - shrewdly, as it turns out - by Bloomsbury. The list is striking for its range of subject matter although, given that a former spymaster is in charge, a bit more intrigue might have been expected. But former MI5 director Dame Stella Rimington told the Guardian: "There is no espionage, no ... there are, though, two post-cold war books. Not because of me, but by general agreement." It took judges around two hours to get the list down to 13 from the 138 books read. "We've had a lot of fun today," said Rimington.

"It was an impassioned debate, but - without any acrimony and with a great deal of humour - we've come up with a longlist we're all pleased with. "It is a list of considerable variety, not only in the subjects but in the range of authors." Rimington admitted it had been "a weighty burden being a judge but also extremely enjoyable and entertaining." The Man Booker's literary director Ion Trewin said: "This is my seventh prize and every year is different from the previous one. I'm particularly pleased to see four first novels and also unfamiliar publishers. That's great, because that's where the future is. "[The longlist] seems to me to be as far-ranging in subject matter as I can recall. One of the things that's changed over the years is that it used to be very much, quote, 'literary fiction'. Now, if it's particularly good, what you might call genre [is] no bar to it being listed." Evidence of that is DJ Taylor's Victorian mystery Derby Day, a book that could easily be called a thriller - a very rare thing on the Man Booker longlists.

The one book predicted by almost everyone is Alan Hollinghurst's sweeping tale of poetry, class and ambiguous sexual identities, The Stranger's Child. The author, who won seven years ago with his last novel, The Line of Beauty, was straight away installed as 5-1 favourite by William Hill. His 584-page book is in stark contrast to second favourite Julian Barnes . A Man Booker bridesmaid, Barnes - shortlisted three times - makes the list with his 150-page offering, The Sense of an Ending. Another familiar name is Sebastian Barry, shortlisted twice before, who is included with On Canaan's Side, in which an old lady looks back on a long life that took her from Dublin to Chicago. The list includes novels which failed to make it on to the radar of newspaper literary editors, among them Yvvette Edwards' A Cupboard Full of Coats, which was reviewed, briefly, in only one national title. The Hackney Citizen helped fill the gap, calling it a gripping tale "of anguish and guilt".

Then there are three Canadian novels which have, as yet, made little impact in the UK: Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, Alison Pick's Far To Go and Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. Other novels on the list are Carol Birch's 11th novel, Jamrach's Menagerie, which made the Orange prize longlist but not the shortlist; Patrick McGuiness for The Last Hundred Days, which examines the end of Ceausescu's tyranny in Romania; AD Miller's Snowdrops, a Moscow-set crime story; and Jane Rogers's The Testament of Jessie Lamb. Among the notable omissions were the 2007 winner Anne Enright. The Forgotten Waltz, a lively tale of Dublin adultery and mortgages, failed to make the cut, as did Last Man in Tower by the 2008 winner Aravind Adiga. There was also no place for former winner Graham Swift or 2008 shortlisters Philip Hensher and Linda Grant.

The panel, chaired by Rimington, includes journalists Gaby Wood and Matthew d'Ancona, politician Chris Mullin and novelist Susan Hill, who also had a stint as a Booker judge 36 years ago when Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won for Heat and Dust. The shortlist of six will be announced on 6 September and the winner on 18 October. He or she will win £50,000, but the prize is worth much more than that. Apart from the kudos, the winner can expect a dramatic upturn in sales. • This article was amended on 28 July 2011. The original said Yvvette Edwards' A Cupboard Full of Coats was not reviewed by any national newspaper. This has been corrected. Judges have revealed the 'Booker's dozen' of 13 novels in contention for this year's prize.

Bring yourself up to date with our coverage of all of the longlisted titles Published: 26 Jul 2011 Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize Adam Martin Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize More The British author Julian Barnes, who has been on the short list four times, won the 2011 Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for his novel The Sense of an Ending. Barnes had been the 5-to-4 favorite among British bookies, as The Atlantic Wire's Ray Gustini pointed out earlier on Tuesday , but despite his short odds it's got to feel good to win. Even if Barnes did once call the prize "posh bingo," according to the Associated Press. The 65-year-old Barnes won the prestigious, $82,000 prize over Stephen Kelman and Carol Birch and Canadians Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt. Reblog

Question: What is the title of the novel by Julian Barnes that won the Man Booker prize in 2011?
Answer: THE SENSE OF AN ENDING